Do you know where exactly your enterprise is standing now? Do you wanna determine what steps you can possibly take to bring it on right track? If yes, then you should start and implement ‘strategic planning’.
Strategic planning is your company’s future course or an organizational formal consideration. Some of the initial questions of this planning should be –
• What do we do at this stage?
• Where are we standing and where we wanted to be?
• How do we excel?
• For whom are we working for and what improvements can we do?
• How can we beat the competition?
• What plans the enterprise has for the next 5 or 20 years?
• How to avoid competition and still be profitable? 
As an entrepreneur, I can very well understand how difficult it is to stay in business in this competitive world. Achieving success is just another story after survival. The most crucial stage of any business is its initial stage. Wouldn’t it be better if you get to the common hurdles faced by small businesses? It will help you as well, right?
In every enterprise board meetings, business hurdles are always the hot topics and – big big worries for many struggling entrepreneurs. Answering the repeated questionnaires and based on my research, I have analyzed the most generic difficulties any small business can face.
According to you, what must be the biggest challenge? No it’s not finance. It’s People. More than a 60% of small businesses find hard to retain qualified employees ‘the pillars of growth and survival’ of any business. In my opinion, the best solution to overcome this situation is to follow the new buzzing trends in HR and by making your employees feel special.
Human resource is not entirely responsible for your people. A brutal statement – but a harsh reality. If you delegate your employees entirely to HR, then conceivably you’re missing out an effective trick! Take advantage and take a ‘big leap’.
Managing your employees effectively is not as daunting as you might think considering my above statement. The real secret lies beneath proper knowledge and skills, which will deliver the best out of your employees – and will lead your organization to a new realm of success.
If you’re running or owning a business, then you might have managed human resource yourself or might have hired a staff that deals with the employee related activities including policies, procedures, hiring, firing, promotions, etc. Over the period of time, you tend to become busy concentrating more on the finances and clients, lowering your paws on people management, leaving your employees entirely on the HR’s shoulders. Things are good and all set, perhaps the trouble might arise and you might have to step in back and take over the change again to handle the troublesome situation. The best solution to avoid this is to go hand in hand with the human resource department and predict the alarming situations well in advance.
Whether it be a public or private corporation, it doesn’t have a body and a mind of its own. What it has is a Director – the soul of the company. He entrusts the company’s business by seizing immense power and responsibilities. Many a times his dictatorships are always susceptible to shrieks and abuses. Know the ideal duties and responsibilities a director should possess.
Undergoing immense pressures and a competent role, not only a director but anybody can tend to become abusive or commanding over the time. That’s but obvious. But if you wanna really become an ideal director, then you should know how to enforce and compel certain duties in a proper fashion. The duties can be fairly categorized into two –
Fiduciary Duties:
You must exercise your powers and duties honestly with the interest of the company and the share holders. In no circumstances should you place yourself in a position where there is a conflict between your responsibilities and your personal interests.
During the Annual Enterprise Board Meeting, few small and medium scale businessmen asked me “What Business Ethics should we follow?” This question caught me off guard and after replying to it, the look I received from them was Priceless!
To answer their question I took a pause as I wanted to give them very practical answer and I started as –
Business ethics are the one which keeps you out of federal prison. People have started giving time for themselves to define their personal morals hence the theory of Business Ethics has evolved under intense scrutiny. One of the best examples I can give you in support to this would be the Enron scandal in 2001, which was indulged in irregular business practices. Many reputed and high profile businessmen were continuously in the news when they were accused for their greed, corruption and deceit. Since then, many business communities for small and large businesses began to focus on ethical behavior and encouraged their employees to follow the same.
Why don’t most of the small businesses survive? After much research and discussions, I found the answer. Most of them still follow the same old-fashioned leadership techniques – the ‘leadership-myths’.